The Heat is On

It's old news now, but we had big excitement last weekend when the chimney caught fire. Clint was driving home from Louisiana. I was getting ready to go Christmas shopping, just heading out the door in fact, when we smelled burning plastic. I puzzled over it for a few minutes, and then remembered that the wood stove always smells like burned plastic when it gets too hot. It's a remnant from last winter, when I lit the first fire of the year, neglecting to notice Clint's singing Billy Bass sitting on the stove until it had melted into a steaming heap of stinking plastic. But that's another story.

When I went to check the stove, the damper bar and the chimney flue were RED HOT. I mean, like a blacksmith's forge. I could hear the sizzling of the creosote burning on the inside of the chimney. That's not uncommon, so it didn't freak me out, but the red hot iron sure did. The air vent had been left on high, so I turned it all the way down, to cut the air to the fire. I opened up the stove to find glowing hot creosote raining down from the chimney within. I ran outside to look and see if there were flames coming from the chimney, but it looked fine. I went back in to fool with the stove some more, to try to figure out how to cool it down. Then the girls, who had stayed outside watching the chimney, called out "Mom, the chimney's on fire". And it was.

Flames were leaping out the chimney, and the grate at the top of the chimney(it's to keep sparks from getting on the roof) was glowing red. I started to call 911, then changed my mind and called Clint instead. I just knew if he was here, he would know what to do without calling the fire department. If he could tell me what to do, we would all be saved a mess of trouble. He told me to call the fire department. 911 couldn't figure out which fire department to refer my call to. Funny, I thought the reason they changed our address to a funky 5 digit number 5 years ago was to put the county on a grid system so addresses could be easily identified by rescue vehicles. Well, it took at least 15 minutes for the fire department to arrive.

Clint called his father-in-law, who lives right across the river, after he hung up with me, and 70 year Gary was there hauling a ladder, climbing my roof and putting out the fire before the fire department even got there. Actually, he shut the damper on the stove first, and that was what cut out the flames. I guess I'd left the damper open, even though Clint told me to shut it all down.

When the fire department arrived, they really arrived. Three trucks and eight firemen. Gary was on the roofand there was no fire visible at that point. The firemen said they would have to get into the attic to make sure nothing was on fire. Clint, via phone, told me to tell them their was no access to the attic, and that they could see the chimney by removing the panelling in Shelby's room. They ignored that and decided to try to get into the attic, which had been sealed after the insulating company shot it full of loose insulation up there years before. While we waited outside, our brave heros found a firefighter small enough to fit through the small attic access door, cut the seal on the access...and determined it was not possible to get into the attic because of the insulation.

Instead, they used their handy dandy heat reading gun, shot it through Shleby's wall, and found that the temperature of the chimney was only 100 degrees. So they climbed on the roof, removed the grate, looked down the chimney, and said "This chimney looks pretty clean." Well, now it does. All the creosote has been burned off!

The grate that was protecting the top of the chimney was covered with creosote. That was what was flaming and red. What must have happened was that when I shut off the air to the overhot stove, the heat jumped up into the chimney and set it on fire, igniting the creosote that had built up on the grate. Had I turned it all down and left it down, it would have gone out by itself. I felt pretty dumb for not being able to figure it all out myself. But, I'm glad to know the fire department is there to help out. If anything else had caught on fire, we would have been glad to have them there.

Grandpa Gary's the real hero, though. He got to my house in less than five minutes and put out the fire in two minutes more. Then, he told me I had done the right thing to call the fire department, that we needed them there just in case. Still, I'm glad Gary was there.